Fencing team hits the road to compete in NCAA championships

Today, the Lions draw their weapons. The Columbia fencing team will head to Boston to compete in the NCAA Fencing Championships at Harvard. The competition, which starts this morning, will conclude on Sunday afternoon.

The Lions will have plenty of chances to take gold, as they are sending eight fencers to Harvard—two from the men’s team and six from the women’s team. The men will be represented by Dwight Smith in epee and Jeff Spear in saber. The women will be represented by Neely Brandfield-Harvey and Lydia Kopecky in epee, D’Meca Homer and Nicole Ross in foil, and Jackie Jacobson and Sammy Roberts in saber. The athletes will be joined by fencers from all over the nation, from Stanford to Penn State.

The women’s bouts will be the first of the competition, as rounds one through four of women’s epee, saber, and foil are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. today. Rounds five through seven will be held the following morning, with six semifinal bouts and the gold-medal bouts being held in the afternoon. Rounds one through four of the men’s competition will begin Saturday morning, and the remaining rounds—five through seven, the semifinals, and the gold-medal bouts—will be held all day Sunday. The early rounds will be a round robin format of five-touch bouts, while the semifinal competitions will be direct elimination, 15-touch bouts. The top four fencers in each event will be able to move onto the semifinal rounds to compete for first, second, and third.

Last year, Columbia finished in fourth place overall behind Penn State, Notre Dame, and Ohio State. Penn State won the competition with 195 points. Columbia’s Daria Schneider was the top individual finisher for the Lions, coming in third in women’s saber. Ross finished fifth in women’s foil and Brandfield-Harvey finished sixth in women’s epee.
With their weapons drawn, the Lions will look to improve on last year’s fourth-place finish.